Split­ting Hairs, The ​“Jochen Katz” Way

In con­tin­u­a­tion of their tra­di­tion of bel­ligeren­cy, Answer­ing Islam has post­ed an ear­ly reac­tion in objec­tion to our pub­lish­ing of Han Kung on the Prophet Muham­mad^(P). There are sev­er­al issues in this reac­tion by Jochen Katz, the de fac­to dic­ta­tor of Answer­ing Islam, that needs to be point­ed out and corrected.

We shall briefly respond to each of the alle­ga­tions, which are :

• Jochen Katz seems to come to too fast a con­clu­sion in assum­ing that I (MENJ) have exclu­sive con­trol of Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma​’s edi­to­r­i­al poli­cies. We do not know how he runs things at his web­site, nor do we care about it. It should be stat­ed right here from the start that Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma is an online col­lab­o­ra­tion of sev­er­al Mus­lim indi­vid­u­als who are con­cerned about the deen and wish to see a site facil­i­tat­ing their rebut­tals to the Chris­t­ian and anti-Islam­ic forces on the Inter­net. Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma does not revolve around one indi­vid­ual by the name of ​“MENJ”. We run things here in accor­dance to a shu­ra’, Mus­lim con­sul­ta­tion. This is not my per­son­al site, which can be accessed here. Katz needs to stop impos­ing his Nazi her­itage on us in equat­ing Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma with ​“MENJ” and ​“MENJ” with Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma as, save for the fact that I have indeed co-found­ed this site with a part­ner, this project is not my own and I assume no con­trol over it, unlike how Katz may be safe­ly assumed to have dic­ta­to­r­i­al con­trol over his website.
• Jochen Katz takes issue with a sim­ple sen­tence : ​“the Chris­t­ian opin­ion on Prophet Muham­mad^(P)”. We have nev­er said that Kung’s opin­ion rep­re­sent all Chris­tians or that Kung’s words is the sole canon­i­cal author­i­ty that all Chris­tians must fol­low. Katz must have been read­ing too much into the text. Again, how things are run at Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma is total­ly dif­fer­ent from how Katz with his dic­ta­tor­ship run things at his web­site. How­ev­er, to sat­is­fy Katz’s ego and to make our expla­na­tion clear­er, we have reword­ed the text. We hope that Katz will no longer have any com­plaints about how the sen­tence was worded.
• Since Katz have wast­ed his (and our) time com­plain­ing about such a minor issue about whether Kung is speak­ing on behalf of ​“THE Chris­t­ian” com­mu­ni­ty or one of the var­i­ous diverse Chris­t­ian opin­ions, we will not be both­ered to address the rest of his polem­i­cal dia­tribe. As usu­al, Katz loves to split hairs and as a tes­ta­ment to his undy­ing hatred of the Prophet Muham­mad^(P), tries to cast doubt on the schol­ar­ly cre­den­tials of Hans Kung. Now, we know who Hans Kung is, and he is a well-known author­i­ty who is often invit­ed to speak at uni­ver­si­ties in the Mus­lim World. Now who is one obscure (Nazi!) Ger­man math­e­mati­cian by the name of ​“Jochen Katz” is, com­pared to the world-renowned Catholic the­olo­gianWe believe that Katz has been mak­ing up sto­ries in his polemic about the ​“non-Catholic­i­ty” of Hans Kung, as to the best our knowl­edge, Kung is still a Catholic priest and is intro­duced as such in every lec­ture he attends. Accord­ing to his Wikipedia entry : ​“He [Kung] was not excom­mu­ni­cat­ed and remains a Roman Catholic priest.” by the name of Hans Kung ?
• Last­ly, Katz decides to beat a dead horse by preach­ing about the so-called ​“false­hood” of the Prophet Muham­mad^(P). Since Katz was so hung up about Kung’s glow­ing trib­ute to the Prophet Muham­mad^(P) and ques­tioned Kung’s ​“rep­re­sen­ta­tion” of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­tyAlthough we have nev­er stat­ed that this is so !, may we be jus­ti­fied in say­ing that Katz’s opin­ion is only one opin­ion and does not rep­re­sent ALL Chris­tians in their opin­ion of the Prophet^(P)?

With this brief assess­ment, we end our response here. See also The Küng Con­tro­ver­sy : An Analy­sis of Jochen Katz’s Recent Tirade. And only Allah knows best ! 

The author is the co-founder and exec­u­tive edi­tor of Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma.